a moment, enough of the circle had been cut that Nott could see who was beyond it. There were two figures in the darkness. Neither was their master. (How could they be, when he didn’t have his athame?)
“It’s them!” Nott yelled, his eyes sharper than anyone else’s. “Wilkin, it’s them!”
Quin and her tall, redheaded companion were standing in the darkness, about to invade the privacy of the Watchers’ fort.
More than that. The edge of Nott’s helm was visible—it was sticking out the top of the pack on the tall one’s back. They had stolen the helm. Of course. It wasn’t lost at all. They were thieves—first their master’s athame, then the precious helmet.
“They have our helm, Wilkin!”
With an animal roar, he ripped himself out of Geb’s grasp and tripped across the floor to grab up his whipsword. As he ran toward the solidifying anomaly, he heard the others following close behind. He glanced back to see Geb pulling his own helm onto his head. Good, Nott thought, we’ll need that.
All their training, all of their master’s plans, were instantly forgotten. They charged from the fortress, weapons drawn, ready to retrieve the athame and Nott’s helm besides. And why not? Whoever succeeded in recovering those would surely become their master’s favorite, and would never, ever be sent to die in a cave.
“Knowledge of self
Knowledge of home
A clear picture of
Where I came from
Where I will go
And the speed of things between
Will see me safely back.”
Shinobu and Quin were reciting the time chant together. They stood shoulder to shoulder in the darkness There as Quin carved an anomaly back into the world.
As the threads of light and dark snaked away from each other, Shinobu saw a gray and rainy landscape—Scotland again, of course. In the distance were forested slopes shrouded in mist, and above loomed dark rock peaks. Close by, just on the other side of the anomaly, was a ruined fortress falling into a lake. The fortress that had been mentioned in the journal, of course.
The place was isolated and in ruins, but not empty. Before the anomaly was even fully open, Shinobu heard voices yelling, then saw four boys running directly toward them, brandishing weapons and looking murderous.
“Quin!” he yelled. “Pick different coordinates! Hit the athame again!”
At the same moment, though, he had the oddest thought: Here they are. Stay.
He dragged Quin backward a dozen steps as she turned the dials on the athame to take them somewhere else. But the boys were already at the anomaly. They didn’t pause but leapt across its seething border as if it were no more than an ordinary doorway in a house somewhere.
Insanity! Shinobu thought. Jumping into an anomaly to fight was madness.
“Your whipsword!” he said to Quin, cracking out his own.
In another moment, the boys were slashing at Shinobu, who’d positioned himself between them and Quin. He was trying to gain her more space to use the athame. If she didn’t succeed quickly, they would be trapped. That thought was terrifying…
And yet he’d been expecting those two boys. The journal had said this location was where the Middle had trained “two youths…of lowly families.” All day, somewhere in the back of his mind, Shinobu had been anticipating an encounter. He’d been hoping to find them. It was necessary. But why is it necessary? he wondered. The answer was as strange as it was simple: the focal had told him it was necessary.
From where he fought, Shinobu could see that Quin was having difficulty reading the athame’s dials in the low light. She hadn’t been able to strike it yet. She stood at his side now, fighting the oncoming blows of four miniature whipswords. Matching weapons for four mismatched boys, two dark, two light—though all had the same vicious style of fighting, the same smell of death hanging about them. The anomaly was behind the boys, casting them into shadow and making it difficult to see details in their movements.
He’d expected two boys, but there were four—and the two new ones were older and larger. All four were attacking them murderously, suicidally throwing themselves into the dark, unmoored time of There. And yet he felt a connection to them.
Stop, he told himself. There is no connection.
The small swords were both an advantage and a disadvantage to the boys—a disadvantage because Shinobu’s whipsword had a much longer reach, but an advantage because the boys could slip inside his blows and drive him back. Shinobu flicked his wrist, making his own whipsword shorter to match theirs.